Frankenstein Reborn (film, 2006)

Cheap and shlocky, Frankenstein Reborn is old-fashioned, exploitative horror movie making – right down to the gratuitous and unnecessary girl-on-girl sex scene – at its absolute worst. Or, if you’re a big fan of this kind of thing, at its absolute best.

There’s no need to reiterate the plot, it’s Frankenstein with added boobs and less moral reflection, the modern day setting serving only to add psychotherapy and the miracle of nano-technology to the bad Doctor’s black bag of tricks.

It is completely bereft of logic, and suffers from the annoying narrative over-complication. The monster’s bad because Frankenstein is a sociopath and his thoughts get transmitted into the creature by nanobots, a la Harvey Keitel in Saturn V. Poor, but at least someone thought about that. They didn’t think about a lot of other things. Why do they make the monster ugly? Why does Frankenstein not go to a big corporation with his research, why does such a creep end up in bed with two beautiful chicks? Actually, the last is fairly explicable – the film is concerned with tits and gore and not much else, so much so that you can almost see the director tittering over his rushes.

This is a CV filler for the young filmmakers involved, although this was the director’s third feature, it feels like a narratively fractured college-project horror.

DVD extras: Behind the scenes featurette; deleted scenes; trailer.

Did you know?

Leigh Scott (aka Leigh Slawner) worked as an intern for Roger Corman whilst he was studying at film school in LA. He also acts, and appears as Doctor Cadaverella in this film.